Page 65 of Lord Carlisle's Enticing Lure
Clive gathered upher limp body, a scream silent in his throat. He could not see well in the dark, but he groaned at the profuse way her wrist bled.
Langley rose from the man he’d tied, hand and foot. He stood to one side of Halsey, who stood cleaning his own blade with a lace handkerchief. He leaned against the doorframe, favoring one leg.
“Halsey!” Langley yelled at him. “You’re hurt! Do you need—?”
“No! A graze, that’s all. Let’s truss up these buggers, good and tight. Get our men to haul them to Hastings’ gaol and get the hell out of here!”
“I know a house nearby.” Halsey hobbled with Clive toward a nearby rock to sit down. “Go ahead. Your lady needs urgent care. Let me bind my wound here.”
“Come with us,” Clive urged him. “You need tending.”
“I am fine. Call upon my cousin in Fish Street. A fine Georgian house, cannot miss it. My cousin will give us one of her bedrooms and call a physician.”
“Who is this? Her name, please.”
“Lady Tracy.”
Langley ran forward to help Clive get Giselle into the carriage. He shut the door on Clive and uttered a few words to the driver, and that man slapped the reins on the horses. “Now we fix you, Halsey!”
Clive could not get to the house and help fast enough. Horror that he might lose Giselle seared his veins like poison. He had tied her limbs, but not stopped the bleeding of her wrist. For that he mopped up the streaming fluid by applying the only thing to hand—a rough coach blanket. In agony, he gathered her cold body close.
“It’s not far,” he crooned for Giselle.
She heard him not.
But he continued to speak to the woman in his arms, speaking of marriage and children, life in London or Richmond or anywhere else on earth she wished to go. “All of it will be ours, my darling. I promise you.”
Less than five minutes later, the hack pulled up to a stone house near the edge of town. A man appeared, curious and officious. The butler, Clive supposed.
“I am a friend of Lord Halsey,” he told the silver-haired gentleman as he opened the carriage door. “I need help for my wife.” He called her what she was in his heart and for the benefit of any propriety this household upheld. “We need accommodation and a surgeon or physician.” He secured Giselle in his grasp.
The man, alarmed, thrust up a hand. “One moment, sir. I will call a footman.”
He ran away and returned in a moment. “Do not disturb her, sir, until my man joins us. I’ve called my lady.”
“Lady…?” Clive had trouble recalling the woman’s name.
“Lady Tracy, sir. She comes.”
As if conjured from the man’s words, a woman rushed out. Young, dark hair loose upon her shoulders and eyes wide at the scene before her. “Roberts, call James to help us.” She pushed inside, wincing at the looks of the bloody ties on Giselle’s wrist and the stains on her skirts. “The wound on her thigh has stopped bleeding. A good sign. But these… Not to worry, sir. We know what to do here.”
“A surgeon?”
“Yes. We will send for one. Roberts, we’ll carry her into the downstairs library. My chaise longue will serve. Bring it forth. Get Mrs. Howard to bring us bandages, warm water, whisky, and vinegar.”
She latched on to Clive’s gaze. “The worst is the one to her wrist.”
Which still bleeds.He nodded. “Let’s get her settled.”
*
Lady Tracy’s surgeonwas a curt, grizzled, white-haired fellow who limped into the room and, without a word, opened his leather kit and bent over Giselle.
He pushed up her skirts, saw the tourniquets and dried blood, then stretched out her afflicted arm upon the mattress. “We must move her to a proper bed.”
Clive objected. “No. Help her now.”
“Sir, I would like to. She bleeds most here.” The surgeon pointed to her forearm, where the bloody cravat showed bright-red blood still seeping out. “This wound is deeper than those on her calves and thighs. I must clean the gash and stitch her up. I need her arm extended and flat. I cannot do that here.” He arched a brow and waved a hand at two footmen. “Move her.”
